Public Discourse Thoughts

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As the semester comes to an end, I wanted to collect all my final thoughts I've had over this course and what exactly I've learned. When I got my schedule for this semester, I was most worried about this class. I'm not exactly the type of person to engage in political discussions as my knowledge of it was quite small. 

 However, in this class, I've learned so much from the readings and from my fellow classmates when it comes to discussions in class. I've learned how to both approach and analyze public discourse, as well as, expanding my knowledge on what kinds of public discourse there is.

A question I want to focus more on is: What kinds of conversations does social media permit or encourage now? The internet has become such a big place to find people with similar internets. Those interests can be about pretty much anything: sports, music, movies, and of course, politics. It permits or encourages those to have conversations on those internets by expanding their knowledge and having discussions.

Through those discussions, the internet is able to have conversations where they're able to agree or disagree. With that, they're able to give their viewpoints and why they think the way they do. 

Of course, social media websites have often made changes where they can limit their access to public discourse through only allowing certain people to reply to their posts. Some specific examples being Instagram where you can limit how many comments there are or on Twitter where you can make it an option that only people you follow can reply or only people you mention. 

Throughout this course I've discovered that public discourse is becoming very limited in many different aspects. I believe that in order for things to work and flow, there needs to be a discussion so we can hear every side's opinions and points. After that, we can draw a conclusion to what changes or actions need to be made to create the best outcome. 

Do you think that social media has added too many limitations when it comes to allowing public discourse? Why exactly is discourse important? What do you think would happen if we didn't have any form of discourse?


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